On the Environment

Tanya Fields is a mother, activist and entrepreneur in the South Bronx. She is the Executive Director of The BLK ProjeK, a non-profit organization that works to create a better food system for marginalized neighborhoods and demographics, especially underserved women and youth of color. And she will be the first presenter in this year’s Policy Workshop Webinar series on the subject Frontiers in Food and Agriculture, which starts on Tuesday, September 17 at 12:00 PM EDT.

A young woman of color herself, Tanya feels that she came to her work as an activist out of necessity. As a single mother living in a low-income community and putting herself through school, she was intimately familiar with the struggles and stresses faced by families without the resources to access healthy food and environments. The challenges she faced in her own life inspired her to take action, working first with on issues of environmental justice for organizations including Mothers on the Move, Sustainable South Bronx and the Majora Carter Group. This work, and the networks, knowledge and experience she gained, led her to create the BLK ProjeK in 2009 as a means of embodying her ethic through “real, tangible, effective action.”

The BLK ProjeK’s current initiatives include the South Bronx Mobile Market, a converted school bus that makes fresh, local, and organic vegetables available to communities in the South Bronx. The ProjeK organizes the Bronx Grub Meal Series, a quarterly community dinner that serves a sustainable low cost or free meal, while encouraging civic engagement and dialogue. The BLK ProjeK has an on-going initiative called Libertad Urban Farm, a movement that seeks to reclaim underdeveloped land to put to use as community gardens. Although the BLK ProjeK’s work is rooted in food issues, its impact extends much wider: by working at the intersection of race, class and gender, it is actively engaged in issues of community growth and development, representation and empowerment, public and mental health, and environmental stewardship.

To learn more about Tanya Fields, the BLK ProjeK, and food justice in urban communities, tune into Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy’s webinar “Frontiers in Food and Agriculture: A Conversation with Tanya Fields” on Tuesday, September 17 at 12:00 pm EDT. To register, visit www4.gotomeeting.com/register/941997655. Tanya’s presentation will be followed by an interactive Q&A session with the audience.

Jena Clarke is a first-year Master of Environmental Management candidate at the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. She earned her B.S. in International Agricultural Development from the University of California, Davis in 2009. She is interested in agricultural policy, especially relating to livestock production and rangeland management. Her background is in cattle ranching in the US and Australia, where she worked as a cowgirl and later as a business analyst for a corporate agricultural funds manager.